


Somnus

by illegible



Category: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Dad!Elidibus, Friendship, Gen, Sort of Adoption, hardcore theoryfic, hurt comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-10-18 00:17:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20629934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illegible/pseuds/illegible
Summary: The Ascians understand well what is at stake for the Rejoining, but in their haste lose one of the shards to oblivion. Elidibus takes a fragment of their lost fourteenth under his wing.None of them sleep well anymore.





	Somnus

The beast was a knot of arms, long and black and clawed and thin. An extra set of elbows, reaching well past what should have been possible. No face. No eyes. At its center, like an urchin, rested the fleshy, five-toothed mouth. Grinding in on itself.

His son had been terrified as it took him. Screaming. Begging for help. Calling out again and again.

But such was the nightmare’s nature. Something no parent could protect him from.

(These are things he tells himself afterward, things he needs to tell himself every day until he dies.)

He ran as fast as he could, but the chewing had already begun by his arrival. Similar wails echoed across Amaurot, and in the pit of his stomach he understood they would not escape Terminus.

For a moment, for all his power, for all the pain and fear on his child’s face, he froze.

Elidibus has never been a warrior. He was too late and too slow and he watched as with one crack after another a monster took the boy’s head in its maw and _chewed_.

The hollow crunch of skull being crushed. Blood and gray matter and eyes dripping to the ground. Paste. Shards of mask.

Nothing more to hear.

***

In the night, in solitude, the Emissary wakes.

He says no words. The only sounds come from his racing heart, the ragged breath he grounds himself in.

There is no sleep after that.

***

Darkness takes the Thirteenth.

Igeyorhm realizes too late that things have spiraled past her ability to recover. In haste to demonstrate value, she has butchered a world without cause.

(Their world, not hers. She is incomplete, she does not remember. She has no way of knowing the full weight of her failure. These are the things Emet-Selch will say later. And Lahabrea will defend her, that she is young and eager and believes in them. She wanted to prove herself. They didn't know this would happen. And Elidibus will watch, and listen, and remain mute.)

She summons them. All of them. Terrified and remorseful and babbling about a world consuming itself. Lord Zodiark’s domain, she thought in drawing from His aspect He would aid them. That it would prove more secure than any alternatives.

Igeyorhm does not, yet, fully understand the properties of primordial Darkness. How could she? Sundered and yet so young, pledging herself to a world that lives only in dreams.

It is the first time since Amaurot that they have fought side by side. It makes him sick.

He knows the other two feel the same. Lahabrea becomes more impulsive, louder, erratic when he’s afraid. Emet-Selch, by comparison, has gone nearly silent. His vessel is ashen, stark contrast to his mask. Nonetheless he moves with speed and efficiency.

Hopefully it will be enough.

The flood of darkness invokes familiar drives for survival. Eikons of the Thirteenth prove primitive, ill-mapped concepts easily corrupted by circumstance. As they overwhelm the denizens of their shard they become twisted further. Born of the secret fears and desires of hosts, they embody the primal urge to endure at the exclusion of all else.

Without reason, without a shred of morality to remain, they will slaughter and feed and fuck and drain all substance from the land itself until only a Void remains.

What it looks like…

In Amaurot, the beasts they feared were reflections. Stealing aether from their makers, manifesting every horror they tried in vain to subdue. Not so, here.

Here, the fragmented remains of their kin become beasts themselves. Splitting like overstretched rubber, like the burst flesh of a pomegranate. Bones splinter under the weight of their hunger. Nothing resembling a person remains.

Fire and blood, they inflict upon themselves. All notion of the sacred, of boundaries, of anything worth protecting.

Gone.

Lahabrea’s strategy is to eliminate those whose aether has already been contaminated. Minimize destruction, loss of life. Prevent the affliction from spreading as much as possible. He employs his knowledge of weapons, of beasts, of destructive magics to this end.

A calamity must come, but not this way. There will be nothing left for the Source to absorb.

Emet-Selch attempts to preserve those who remain, to steel them against further incursion. The fervor with which he mans the defenses is admirable, and though he does not comment Elidibus suspects this is an opportunity he's longed for. Before undertaking his own mission, Elidibus instructs Loghrif to ensure the Angel of Truth doesn’t overextend.

They can’t afford to lose him.

Should this plan fail, they can yet develop countermeasures. However, those Sundered members of their convocation can never hope to match the insight of a full Amaurotine.

It was a mistake to allow Igeyorhm so much freedom.

The Emissary, for his part, prepares for the worst.

There is yet a sundered being here whose Echo carries the gift of foresight. No longer that person he once knew, but whose gift can only prove miraculous to their cause. Losing him may doom the world once more.

If naught else may be salvaged, let it be their prophet.

***

Past the crumbling temples, archways blackened with premature decay. Past the sounds of men gorging on one another, laughing as their bodies bloat. Past homes withering like rotten fruit and a starless night spreading like mold, Elidibus finds him.

Cycles have little meaning to an immortal, but even he recognizes the child blessed by Light is young. Somewhere over a yalm in height, his face retains gentle traces of infancy.

And he is bleeding out in the street, his face streaked in tears, before a creature he calls_ mother_ in his own tongue.

The beast is a distortion. Like an animal, teats sag in rows down her torso. An impossibly small waist. Hips far broader than her shoulders. Arms elongated that she might travel on all fours, tail whipping behind her. Hands and feet unnervingly human, nails yet soft and rounded. A too-long neck. Head undersized by comparison. White, matted hair (like her son, the one resemblance remaining between them) partially conceals her face. Eyes bulge, dark irises dragged impossibly low in their sockets as spittle mingles with blood on her lips.

Blood on her lips.

Human teeth.

Child beneath her.

This time, Elidibus reacts.

The very darkness that has overrun her body follows his direction like an extension of his own limbs. Navel to throat, she splits in half. What seeps from her smokes where it lands. Ribs crack like green wood. Organs spill where flesh no longer binds them.

She shrieks, and she shrieks, and the Emissary tears her body again and again and again until no sound remains.

***

The boy is horrified. Violet eyes wide, fixed to the corpse he’d once loved.

Elidibus, breathing hard, cannot move for several moments.

He looks at his unmarred hands, his white robes. All violence of magic made separate from his person.

The gift is immediately recognizable, and Elidibus finds himself grateful to have that excuse.

It’s as if he walks through water. Too light, too slow.

He kneels.

Hesitates.

“Be still,” says Elidibus quietly, and this shattered child flinches. Turns to him in terror.

Stills nonetheless.

A few moments are all Elidibus can spend on healing, addressing the most grievous wounds. With an adult protecting him once more, the boy begins to sob where he lies on the ground.

There is a small, rudimentary staff beside him. More akin to a toy than a weapon.

Elidibus places it back into the hands of its owner.

“We're leaving this place,” he hears himself say. It isn’t an apology and there is nothing soothing in the delivery. It’s all he can do, in the moment, to keep going.

The Ascian meets no resistance as he lifts someone else’s son to his chest.

Together, they disappear in a flare of shadow.


End file.
